THE DRAMATIC LICENSE SHOW:

When it comes to making art, genres can be as constrictive as they are descriptive. Terms like “farce” or “tragedy” or “rom-com” all come with the heavy baggage of rules and expectations. So in planning our next show, we at PRIME thought: why not defy pop culture’s most familiar genres by combining and remixing them?

Thus was born The Dramatic License Show: A 24-Hour Adaptation Festival. This smorgasbord of theatrical mashups will kick off at 8 p.m. Saturday, September 2 at The Gaslight Theater (358 North Boyle Avenue). Tickets are $15 at the door.

The third production of PRIME’s four-show 2017 season, The Dramatic License Show will feature six plays, with each script combining two contradictory genres to tell familiar stories in unexpected ways. Examples of our planned mashups include: Shakespeare noir, fairytale documentary and slasher chick flick.

As with all PRIME productions, the entire festival will be written, rehearsed and performed in a 24-hour frenzy of creativity. An ensemble of local actors, directors and visual artists will team up to produce the work of playwrights from St. Louis and throughout the world. Previous PRIME productions have featured scripts from playwrights living in Japan and Canada.

“We took a bit of ‘dramatic license’ on this one -- because we at PRIME believe in deconstructing the things we know and looking at them with a new perspective,” said PRIME Co-Founder Andrea Standby. “This show adapts the best classic stories and gives them a bit of a plot twist by swapping their genres.”

Standby and Managing Director Kyle Kratky launched PRIME in 2016. Its mission is to create raw, welcoming, and unorthodox theatre for all, encapsulating the ephemeral while encouraging community engagement.

For more information on PRIME, email press@primetheatre.org or call (314) 884-1647.